The Tycoon Playbook course was created for business families who are already running a successful business and wish to ramp up their growth while preserving wealth for future generations. Specifically, the Playbook teaches high performance business owners the two most highly rewarded skills in business, namely deal-making and how to acquire cash flow producing business assets.

Charitable Giving

TORONTO – More than nine in 10 Canadians follow the example of reformed miser Ebenezer Scrooge and give to charity every year, but experts advise taking a page from his tightwad ways and treat those charitable donations like an investment.

The cycle of giving | Treana Peake Treana Peake how one small action can have an unknown but lasting impact. Our acts of kindness have enormous capacity to carry on far beyond the actual moment of giving, and that what we experience in these generous moments is only the beginning. As the founder and creative designer of the luxury fashion line Obakki and its philanthropic counterpart, the Obakki Foundation, Treana Peake has fused her lifelong passions together to create engaging and innovative philanthropy. By giving fashion a purpose and applying creativity to development work, Peake is tilting the landscape of generosity and pioneering a new type of fundraising model, one that is both dynamic and inspiring. As the creative designer and founder of the luxury fashion line Obakki and its philanthropic counterpart, the Obakki Foundation, Treana Peake has fused her lifelong passions together to create engaging and innovative philanthropy. The Obakki Foundation has delivered over 600 water wells and built 12 schools in South Sudan and Cameroon, leading to self-sustainable growth in countless communities, and garnering recognition and endorsement by the UN in the process. Peake’s leadership in fashion through Obakki has also received widespread acclaim through international publications such as Vogue UK and Elle, and her contemporary, sophisticated designs have been spotted on celebrity devotees such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson. By giving fashion a purpose and applying creativity to development work, Peake is pioneering a new type of fundraising model, one that is both dynamic and inspiring.

The power of us | Mari Kuraishi How does a World Bank employee go on to co-found a charitable organization that funds human aid around the globe? Mari Kuraishi tells the story of Global Giving. Mari co-founded GlobalGiving with Dennis Whittle, and currently leads the organization. In 2011, Mari was named one of Foreign Policy’s top 100 Global Thinkers for “crowdsourcing worldsaving.” Before GlobalGiving, she worked at the World Bank where she managed and created some of the Bank’s most innovative projects including the first ever Innovation and Development Marketplaces, and the first series of strategic forums with the World Bank’s president and senior management. Mari also designed a range of investment projects in the Russia reform program, including a residential energy efficiency project, structural adjustment loans, and legal reform project. She currently serves as chair of the board of the Global Business School Network and on the board of Guidestar US. In addition to her native Japanese, Mari also speaks Russian, Italian, and French. She has an undergraduate degree in history from Harvard University and did graduate work in Russian and Japanese history and politics at Harvard and Georgetown Universities. Mari also completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.

Excellence Through Generosity | Gilmore Junio WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO GILMORE JUNIO? Olympic Speed Skater, Gilmore Junio shares his personal story of generosity and how building a culture of selflessness can lead to personal excellence. Junio recounts the story of how and why he gave up his place in the 1000 metre Olympic final in Sochi 2014 to his teammate who won the Silver Medal for Canada. Gilmore teaches us that we have more to win when we are generous. In the summer of 2010, Gilmore Junio was named to Canada’s Long Track Development Team, and that fall he found himself travelling the globe racing for Canada at World Cups. Three years later he was ranked 8th in the world with a World Cup Silver medal, and just a year after that he found himself representing Canada at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. But despite his accomplishments on the track, it was was what he did off the track at those Olympics that resulted in Junio’s receiving a champion’s welcome upon his return home to Calgary. After teammate Denny Morrison fell and failed to qualify for the men’s 1000 m, he received a text message from Junio, who decided to withdraw so that Morrison could have the opportunity to race instead. Morrison went on to win the silver medal in that race, giving Morrison his fourth ever Olympic medal, equaling Gaetan Boucher for the most medals by a Canadian male long track speed skater.

Revolutionising Charity | Cassandra Treadwell Cassandra shares a personal story of discovery and invites us all to come down from our white horses and dance with the zebras. Cassandra is a philanthropist, lawyer, entrepreneur, global citizen, yogi, artist, and mother. Cassandra gained her masters in medical law and ethics from King’s College, London. She enjoyed living overseas before returning to Wellington to raise her four children in the nurturing community she grew up in. She loves living in New Zealand for the outdoor lifestyle it enables. During a year in Argentina aged 16, Cass saw poverty for the first time. The injustice sculpted her career choices. Later, as a new mother this empathy saw her return to communities in Africa she met travelling and determine to improve the lives of those who suffered from political violence. Working in Africa as CEO of So They Can, she gains so much from the communities she works with. They have taught her to be grateful for what she has got, to live in the present, the value of Ubuntu (I am because of you) and the importance of global balance.

A new set of vectors now surround donors. Akin to the vectors of physics, these new vectors include the tendency of donors to (1) seek out rather than resist venues for charitable giving, (2) approach their philanthropy entrepreneurially, meaning they seek personally to make a creating and distinctive impact, (3) consider that care for the needs of others is a path for their own self-fulfillment, and (4) view philanthropy as a key ingredient of the financial morality they wish to live and impart to their children. These vectors increasingly become allies, not enemies to overcome. They represent how material and spiritual wherewithal come together as a more important aspect of moral biography for a larger number of individuals. In my view, people are inclined to seek happiness; and therefore live a gospel of life. Second, they are their own best teachers since they have to internalize the meaning and goals of life, including philanthropic decision, for themselves. Finally, there is a new inclination for people to see how their gospel of life is directly connected to financial care and philanthropy: for themselves, their children, their churches, and their world. Why People Give Using the New Physics of Philanthropy? 1) Discernment Discernment in the realm of philanthropy has a two-fold mission: to help people discern from their own perspective their financial capacity and their charitable aspirations, that is their empowerment and moral compass. To accomplish this without the imposition of law, discernment needs to be exercised in an atmosphere of liberty and inspiration. There are several steps in carrying out the conscientious self-reflection and decision making associated with spiritual discernment. First, discernment helps individuals to uncover for themselves their financial capacity by clarifying their resource stream and their expense stream. Discernment around the resource stream clarifies what financial resources are available now and in the future. Discernment around the expense stream clarifies what resources are needed to achieve the standard of living individuals’ desire for themselves and their children. This requires conscientious considerations about current and future consumption. Any positive gap between resources and expenses provides a potential for charitable giving, and relative financial security, and liberates an inclination towards charitable giving. 2) Identification Through hundreds of interviews with wealth holders and middle income individuals, I have found that the key motivation for charitable giving is not selflessness but the identification of self. Our modern notion of altruism was developed in part to counter the utilitarian concept of human nature revolving around the rational calculation of self-interest. A deeper alternative is to think about the quality of self rather than the absence of self. Thomas Aquinas suggests a different way to rethink the issue of self. Rather than eliminating the self, Aquinas speaks instead about the unity of love of God, love of neighbour, and love of self. The key is the identification of my self with the fate of others as if it were my own. 3) Gratitude By probing further into “why people give” with the question, “Why are you grateful?” […]

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